“Ordinary Grace” by William Kent Krueger
“That was it. That was all of it,” Frank Drum says. “A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.”
I don’t know what it is about midwestern male writers. I’ve regaled you about Kent Haruf. I haven’t regaled you about Robert Morgan, but I probably will. Right now I’m bragging on William Kent Krueger. Krueger’s ORDINARY GRACE won the 2014 Edgar Award for Best Mystery/Thriller. Though it certainly follows and solves a mystery, I wouldn’t have thought it was a thriller. I don’t gravitate toward thrillers, so, in my world, this is a compliment.
In ORDINARY GRACE, a forty year old Frank Drum recounts his time as a thirteen year old in Michigan in the early 60’s, when he, his younger brother, their pastor father and their irreverent mother get caught up in several deaths in their small town. I was hooked immediately and stayed hooked; the characters and the happenings are interwoven in a fascinating way. Though the story deals with death and murder and suicide, and though I was pulled to find out whodunit, the characters are so real and self reflective and complex that they remain the focus. I cared about them.
Krueger does a brilliant job of making me believe I know the culprit without ever pointing directly, then changing my mind so I seriously know it now. And he does this with writing that is beautifully lyrical. I’m still absorbing how much ORDINARY GRACE is both gentle and strong.
I think that’s what those midwestern guys have in common and what draws me to them. They write gentle, and they write strong.
Good review. The end found me wanting more of you. I guess that’s the goal of writing, one anyway.